Tiripone Mama Taira Putairi

Tiripone Mama Taira Putairi (1846–1881) was educated by French missionaries from birth and became the first ordained Roman Catholic priest in Eastern Polynesia. He was part of the native royal family of Mangareva and his father Bernardo Putairi was the last ruling regent of Mangareva.

Life

Ruins of the Re'e Seminary College on Aukena, one of the earliest institution of higher learning in French Polynesia, founded by Urbain de Florit de La Tour de Clamouze

Tiripone was born to the royal togoiti class of chiefs of the island of Mangareva in the Gambier Islands. His family was considered to be from a junior or fallen branch of the the main royal line. His parents were Bernardo Putairi (also called Maohomotu in some sources), who became the last ruling regent of Mangareva, and Gertrude Toategaru. He adopted the Christian name Tiripone (after the early Christian saint Tryphon of Campsada). Prior to his birth, Christianity was introduced to the Gambier Islands by French Picpus priests, Honoré Laval and François Caret with the support of King Maputeoa and his uncle Mapua, the high priest. Brother Urbain de Florit de La Tour de Clamouze, one of these early missionaries, founded and headed the Re'e Seminary College on Aukena, one of the earliest institution of higher learning in the South Pacific, where native Mangarevan boys were taught Latin and French as future clergymen. Tiripone was among these native boys educated at the Aukena College along with the future king Joseph Gregorio II. The minor seminary was transferred to Papeete, Tahiti in 1870 and then Pamatai in 1872.

The indications are that Tiripone's superiors were not fully convinced of his reliability, for he was stationed on Tahiti rather than back in the Gambiers. At Faaone, under the eye of the retired missionary Laval (with whom he recorded the traditional history of Mangareva), Tiripone exercised a priestly ministry that excluded the hearing of confession. Accounts of his life are not very specific as to why he was withdrawn from his post five or six years later, but indicate fears that his personal life was moving too far back towards Polynesian ways and the dangers they posed. The bishop sent him to the Picpus house in Chile — to protect the honour of the church, according to one account. After a few years in Valparaiso, Tiripone fell sick and died there ('piously', the accounts add) in December 1881. 110 E

On December 24, 1873, he was ordained as a priest by Bishop Tepano Jaussen, the Vicar Apostolic of Tahiti. Father Tiripone became the person in Eastern Polynesia to be ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood.. There are indications that his religious superiors did not fully trust him because they did not stationed him back in his native Gambiers. He was assigned to proselytize in the small department Faaone on the island of Tahiti. Tiripone worked the supervision on the retired Father Laval with whom he wrote a traditional history of Mangareva. The exact details of his work in Faaone are not known, but historian Raeburn Lange indicated he excluded the hearing of confessions and there were fears by his superior of Tiripone regressing to his Polynesian heritage in his personal life. Given these circumstances, he was sent to the Picpus house in Valparaíso in 1879 and died on 27 December 1881. After Tiripone's death, the Catholic churches of French Polynesia continued to rely on mainly non-native priest. The seminary in Papeete was discontinued by Bishop Jaussen on 30 May 1874 due his discouragement of the incapability of the native students. It wouldn't be until 1954 that the next French Polynesian priest Michel-Gaspard Coppenrath was ordained.

Bibliography

• Garrett, John (1982). To Live Among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania. Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. ISBN 978-2-8254-0692-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lange, Raeburn (2006). Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth Century Pacific Islands Christianity (PDF). Christchurch, New Zealand: Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury. ISBN 978-1-74076-176-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Laval, Honoré; Newbury, C. W.; O'Reilly, Patrick (1968). Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Mangareva: ère chrétienne, 1834-1871. Paris: Musée de l'Homme. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)